One night when Kwok Mang-ho was five years old—around the time his father was dying from tuberculosis—he set himself a reckless challenge. “I was on the street somewhere in the Times Square area, near Happy Valley,” he recalls. “Us children used to play with soda drink bottle caps. But that night I had a firecracker. I was thinking, ‘If I don’t throw it, what will happen?’ I felt a huge sound, a huge explosion. I didn’t feel pain. I just felt all my fingers bleeding. I was sent to hospital.”
Kwok, now better known as his artist alter ego Frog King, can’t quite explain why he didn’t let go of the lit firecracker. Nor can he remember why, a year or so later, he ran away from his mother on…
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Tatler Hong Kong (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2020